The Highs and Lows of Facebook Fundraising
By Janet McDermid
To be completely honest running my first Facebook fundraiser was scary. But I took a deep breath, did it anyway and even raised some money!
So what prompted me to overcome my fear? Shame, gratitude and knowledge. A Just Peoples’ email asking for help with their Covid-19 Emergency Response arrived almost simultaneously as I was worrying about having enough of my favourite coffee beans to last NZ’s Level 4 lockdown! That shame was followed by gratitude that I would continue to have decent food, water and healthcare. I also knew that I could do something to help these people facing a real crisis. I would set up the Facebook fundraiser.
True to form, most of the younger ones around me said “you just do this, or that”; “use hashtags”; “invite your friends” and “tag your donors”.
O.K all of that is true and easy if you know how, but I didn’t. So, first things first. Just Peoples and Facebook actually did most of the hard work for me by providing the fundraising template.
Just Peoples suggested the title, the text I could use, and provided relevant photographs, all of which are essential to grab attention, stir an emotion and entice people to support your fundraiser.
With that done the page looked amazing and very professional. All I had to do was decide how long the fundraiser would run for (2 weeks) and what the target would be (initially $500).
The next step was when it began to get really scary. Who should I invite? How would they react to another fundraiser, what would they think of me and who in my friend group would likely donate? I was very aware of my bad timing as another friend had just finished her Facebook fundraiser and we have a lot of friends in common. With this in mind I initially decided not to send it to those I knew had just donated to the other cause. In hindsight this was a mistake as when I was finally brave enough to “invite” those friends most didn’t hesitate to support me!
Facebook makes “inviting” easy with invite prompts next to your friend’s name. Thank you Facebook. I didn’t use hashtags as I’ve never used them before and I felt too nervous to start using them now!
I was ready to post but I was still nervous and unsure as to how and where this would appear on someone else’s Facebook page. I needed reassurance that everything was ok, everyone who was meant to see it would and those who I’d invited would be invited. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen so I crossed my fingers, took a deep breath and posted it. I quickly shut down my computer and walked away!
Just an hour later I had donations and likes on my page which felt amazing, I was overjoyed and quite a bit relieved. In fact, the total was racing so quickly to my target that I thought, with my newly found confidence, I would raise the target to $1,000. In hindsight again I probably should have taken a smaller step and then when that was getting close, step it up again. I’m sure that a target just out of reach is more enticing than a target that looks a long way off. Facebook makes it easy to edit and change parameters as you go, no problem there.
The problem was maintaining that momentum. Once it slowed down it was hard to get it moving again. I posted regular updates as Facebook suggested, sometimes with a photo, thanked those who’d already donated and started a countdown to the end of the fundraiser. But I didn’t know how to reach out to more people. A few more donations, some from unexpected quarters, came in but sadly I wasn’t going to reach my new target. There were more tools in the toolkit I could have used like hashtags and tagging supporters to optimise the fundraiser’s reach, but I wasn’t confident enough to use them.
Even so, in spite of my lack of social media skills, I raised $724 in what’s been a really worthwhile learning experience with plenty of highs and just a few lows.
I’m happy with the results as a first timer, in fact, over the moon that $724 will go such a long way and provide essential food and supplies for a month to 36 families in a Bangladeshi slum.
Will I do it again? Most definitely.
By the way this is my first blog and, if I’m completely honest, it’s scary.
If you’d like to take on the Facebook fundraising challenge yourself, all the info you need to get going is here. Good luck!
You can also make a donation here.